Gunshots As I Title the Human Spirit

I’ve lived days of mortal fear of being fallen by the bullet

The nights of the inevitable atom bomb

Here in the womb of the city,

Expressions of destruction are constant

As poverty

Ignorance in the place of civility

And the strong intimidating the weak

In an unending cycle of the poor

Rising, an infinite tide

Over the crux of the battle to good will.

In the short hot night

Music blasts over cheap speakers

Men scream of thrown fists and

Drunks wander aimlessly

Off on my second floor

I play the fool and think in rhymes

The dead streetlamps,

Illuminating nothing

As solitary hatchbacks and seventies model ghetto cars

Amble threatening toward the impending sunrise

“I am a poet.” I shall scream.

“Come poet.” They shall reply. “We bring death.”

“Why death?” I invariably ask.

“What else?”

Alcohol to numb the brain

Welfare to numb the life, the liberty,

The pursuit of happiness cheap tooling

On homemade scooters, playing catch with an orange

Don’t give me none of that shit, he says

Don’t give me none of that shit.

Off, somewhere down the block